Last Killer Standing
by wmj88
Summary: When a defector's life is danger, James Bond is sent to Berlin to protect the former assassin. Bond's investigation into the defector and his past leads to reveals of betrayal, greed, and a nearly forty year secret worth killing for.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

**Little Odessa**

**Brooklyn, New York**  
**May, ****1976**

The crimson Cadillac Coupe DeVille glided at a slow and steady pace down Coney Island Avenue towards the beach. The neighborhood the car drove through was known as Brighton Beach. This part of Brooklyn was created as a beach resort a hundred years earlier. The neighborhood had then been restructured into a residential community in the 1920's. Since the 30's, Jewish immigrants had drifted to this patch of New York. Many of the resident bore marks on their body, scars and reminders of their time in concentration camps.

Since 1970, the demographic of the neighborhood had begun to shift again. Although plenty of Jews still found their place in Brighton Beach, more and more of them were coming from the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries. The shops in the area were accommodating, the writing in the store windows in Cyrillic script as well as English. Like Little Italy and Chinatown in Manhattan, the growing influx of immigrants gave rise to the nickname of Little Odessa.

The Coupe DeVille sped past kosher butcher shops, makeshift synagogues, and jewelry and appliance stores that lined both sides of the avenue. Red, white, and blue streamers were hung from lightposts and storefronts in celebration of the America's bicentennial anniversary.  
The car contained five men. They were stern-faced and silent, the only sound coming from the car was the steady drone of the engine. Today marked their fifth day in America. They had all flown in from West Berlin, their passports marking them as residents of various cities in West Germany. In actuality, the names and locations on the passport were a grand fiction. The names and identities were just one of many the men used for their work.

The man driving was the oldest by at least twenty years. His steel-colored hair had been grown out from its usual military crew cut. He wore a thick mustache matching the color of his hair. He wore ray-bans on his face and dressed in the current American fashion, a burnt orange turtleneck with a checkered sports jacket and a golden medallion. In truth, he felt ridiculous and foolish in this get-up. It was too flashy and ostentatious, like something a clown would wear.

The other men dressed in similar clothing of various colors, each article of clothing chosen to help them blend in with the current styles and trends of the country. The driver and two of the men in the back smoked cigarettes, their brand was not the common Marlboro or Pall Malls. These were Turkish brands purchased from a special store many miles way from Brooklyn. The foul-smelling smoke of the cigarettes spread through the car and out the cracked windows.

The car turned right on to Brighton Beach Avenue and sped along with the traffic. The Cadillac turned off the Avenue and swooped into a parking outside a four-story apartment building. The driver kept the car running as he looked at the three men in the back of the car. His hard eyes sized up the men. Excitement glittered in his eyes as he gave his men one last look.

"Bewegen," he said in the harsh tongue of German. _Move._

Quickly, the four men exited from the running car. They spread out on to empty the sidewalk, the two men on the end walking towards the opposite ends of the block while two went up the concrete steps into the apartment building's foyer. The man in the car checked his wristwatch. It was 2:14 in the afternoon.

The next five minutes were the most crucial of their operation. The five men had practiced, trained, and prepared for months. They had committed the map of the area to memory, knew the schedules of the NYPD patrolman who passed by the apartment once every fifteen minutes, knew who would be in the apartment building at this time of day and when others would be back. The two men on the street would run interference if any of the apartment's residents attempted to go in, waving them away with a forged detective badge and speaking in perfect American English that there was a gas leak in the apartment and it was not safe to go inside.

Short of an epic fuck up by the two men inside, this operation would go off without a hitch. A successful operation today would be their sixth such outcome in the past two years. The five men were the best of the best their service had to offer. Clever and ruthless, they were the proverbial sword for the party. While other directorates and sections did more acceptable work to protect the GDR, the five of them were the unseen knife that those in control slipped between the ribs of the state's enemies. They were the necessary evil that the politicians that ran the world did not want to face.

The two men inside came off the stairs on the third floor landing, their cigarettes gone from their mouths. The older of the two was a squat, chubby man with a wrinkled face and watery eyes. Sweat clung to his brow. His black hair had traces of gray in it. The grayness, mixed with the wrinkles, made him look ten years older than his current age of thirty-three. The man beside him was taller by at least four inches, coming in around six-foot three. His dark blonde hair was close to his scalp in a buzzcut. His cobalt blue eyes stared straight ahead calmly, never once betraying the nervousness he felt.

The fat man looked up at his younger comrade and nodded. The man tall returned his nod. Today was the young man's first time doing work of this sort. He had been part of the unit for six months now, acting as runner and lookout for the others. But now, it was time for him to truly become one of them.

As they approached the apartment marked 3H, the two men reached into their sports coats and produced weapons from hidden shoulder holsters. They each had a Browning Hi-Power nine millimeter. Screwed on the end of the barrels were two suppressors. The older man nodded as they stopped outside the apartment. With no further words, the tall man thrust a shoe forward at the door. His foot crashed at the base of the doorknob, splintering the door jamb and snapping the lock in two. He led the way into the apartment, rushing in with the short man close behind him.

They came through the door and into the dirty, dimly lit apartment that reeked of the same sour cigarettes they used. Standing in front of a television set, wearing only an undershirt and a dirty pair of underwear, was a thin bald man with a ginger mustache. He held his left hand up while his right hand stayed by his waist where he cupped a velvet bag. He looked at the two men in front of him with no fear or defiance in his face.

"Stasi," he said in a thick German accent. It was a declaration and not a question.

"Ja," said the fat man. "Schild und Schwert der Partei."

"Verpiss dich, du kommunistischen bastarde," the bald man sneered.

Without hesitation, the tall man opened fire with his Browning. The gun kicked three times, three soft pops accompanying the bullets. The bald man fell to the floor, the three shots striking his head and chest. The tall man ventured forward to the body and looked down. The bald man stared up at him, his eyes opaque and his dingy shirt stained with dark red blood. What caught his eye was the bag beside the dead man. The bag had dropped beside the body, its contents spilled out on to the floor.

"Fritz," the tall man said urgently. "Ich habe etwas gefunden. Diamanten."

**Ian Fleming's**

**James Bond**

**007**

**in**

**Last Killer Standing**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

**The Sitter**

**Berlin**

The custom agent looked at the passport in front of him and scanned it with his well-trained eyes. The stamps of other countries' custom officials dotted the side of the passport opposite the photo. India, Australia, France, Serbia, and the United States were the freshest stamps on the paper. The official looked at the photo and then back up at the man before him.

"You need to update your photo," he said in English. "For the scar."

"Right," said James Bond. "I'll remember that when I get back to England."

He nearly touched the thin, vertical scar inches below his eye. He stopped himself at the last second, not wanting to show the agent that he was self-conscious about the mark. With a bored look, the agent stamped the red mark on the passport.

"Welcome to Germany. Next."

Bond collected his papers and walked through Terminal A of the Berlin Tegel Airport. The pedestrian traffic in the area was a shadow of its usual bustling activity. Bond chalked it up to the time. It was a half hour past midnight and only red-eye flight travelers were out and about at this time. He collected his black attaché case at baggage claim and headed towards the exit.

The warm summer night greeted Bond as he walked through the airport's sliding doors. Taxis and shuttle buses were coming and going from the picking up and dropping off sections. The traffic was pretty steady considering the time. A bored voice came over the PA system, first in German and then in English and French, reminding all incoming and departing traffic that the white zone was for loading and unloading only.

A navy blue Mercedes-Benz with heavily tinted windows sat parked in the white zone, openly flaunting the PA address. Leaning against the passenger side door was a tall, blonde woman with her hair in a tight bun. She wore a conservative pants suit and had a cigarette in her hands. Pinned to the suit was the badge of the _Bundespolizei_, Germany's Federal Police

"Mister Bond?" she asked as Bond approached.

"That's me."

"You are the man they sent? The one they call the Sitter?"

"Yes," he replied curtly, not appreciating his boss's sense of humor.

"Welcome to Germany," she said, flicking the cigarette away. "I am Police Inspector Emma Koch, with the Kripo here in Berlin."

She extended her hand as Bond approached. He warmly shook her hand. She wore flats and was still a good two inches taller than the six-foot even Bond. Her handshake was firm for a woman. Probably the side effect of working in a primarily masculine occupation, figured Bond. The firm handshake was a signal to all men that she was no pushover.

"Shall we?" she asked with a smile.

"Let's."

Bond placed his bag in the back of the Mercedes and then they were off. Inspector Koch pulled the car on to the Autobahn Hamburg and sped up to draw even with the fast traffic of the highway.

"Where are we headed?" Bond asked. He stared out the window and looked out at the city as it whizzed by.

"A police safehouse outside the city. We have Zimmer there with a few guards."

"Good. With any luck, I'll have him in London before sunrise."

If his words did come true, then this mission would turn out as the shortest one Bond had ever undertaken. Ten hours earlier, M had sent for him from. Bond left the Universal Export office and went to Vauxhall Cross. It was there, inside the SIS chief's office, that he had first heard the name of Friedrich Zimmer.

Now in his late 60's, Zimmer had defected from East Germany in 1981. With him came his story of being part of a five man Stasi hitsquad that traveled the globe doing the KGB's dirty work. The team consisted of the best men the Stasi could offer. All of them were fluent in multiple languages, were expert tacticians, and they could each blend in across the world in any country with a Caucasian population. The squad killed twenty men in twelve different countries during Zimmer's eight years with them.

For his intel on the inner workings of the Stasi's assassin operations, MI6 had given Zimmer full immunity and a lump sum of three million pounds. M had told Bond at the briefing that it always remained a mystery why Zimmer had come to Six instead of the CIA. The Americans were known to pay top dollar for quality defectors, and he could have gotten twice as much money from them. After spending two years in England giving Six all the knowledge he had, Zimmer was sent to Canada with a new name and life.

Then came the end of the Cold War. The Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union imploded, and the intelligence community began to primarily focus on terrorism. In 2001, Zimmer left Canada for his native homeland. The Stasi's demise eleven years earlier meant that Zimmer's life was no longer at risk by being in Germany.

That changed a week ago. Gunter Lang, one of Zimmer's former hit team members, had been gunned down in his home outside Düsseldorf. Joseph Baer was then found dead three days ago in Dresden, a slit throat bleeding out on the sidewalk three blocks away from his apartment. Like Lang, Baer had been a member of Zimmer's team. The two deaths only left two former squad members left alive: Zimmer and Wilhelm Farber. The team leader, a Stasi Major named Manfred Ackerman, had died of lung cancer in 1980. Farber's last known location was in a town called Eberswalde close to the Polish border. The _Bundespolizei _had gone to his home and found no trace of the man. A widower with no children or other living relatives, Farber was in the wind.

With all this information relayed to Bond, M had laid out the mission parameters in five simple words: Get Zimmer to London alive. Extract Zimmer as quickly and as quietly from Berlin as possible. There was a six o'clock flight to London booked in Bond's name for two seats. Come hell or high water, M had said with a sharp look, Zimmer would be in one of those seats. Bond had casually asked why a 00 was being sent to perform the task of a babysitter for a man with useless information.

Because he had said so, M had snapped. He reminded Bond that he served at M's pleasure, not the other way around. If he wanted Bond hunting for goddamned seashells in the Persian Gulf, all he had to do was snap his fingers. He should be so lucky he was sending him off to be a babysitter. Besides, he wanted a 00 to make sure it was done fast and correctly. Despite his return to Germany, M felt that Six still owed the man for his help fighting the Cold War. Plus, the man had grumbled, their reputation would take a beating if word got out that Six couldn't protect defectors from death even years after working for them. Q gave Bond his attaché case, and he had caught a flight to Germany at Heathrow that evening and was on the way to Berlin by sundown.

"We're here," said Koch.

Bond blinked suddenly, being pulled out of his stupor. The car was pulling into a dirt driveway outside a two-story farm-house. He could see chipped white paint covering the house even in the dark. The bad paint job aside, the house looked sound. The most unassuming place to keep a safehouse, thought Bond.

"Where is here?"

"Spandau," she said, parking beside a black Mercedes SUV. "Outside the city."

Koch led Bond into the house. Three men were in home's dully furnished sitting room. Two young men stood from a card table as Koch entered. The three had a rapid conversation in German that Bond understood enough of to know that she was sending them outside to patrol around the yard. They nodded and headed off while Bond approached the third man in the room.

He was squat and fat, his gray hair receding back in a widow's peak. His face was heavily lined and wrinkled, making him look closer to eighty instead of his mid-sixties. A smoking cigarette clamped in one nicotine stained hand. His watery eyes looked up at Bond as he approached the sofa he was sitting on.

"Mister Zimmer?"

"Yes," he said, swallowing hard and taking a long drag on his cigarette. His right knee bounced nervously up and down as he watched Bond.

"You're with MI6?"

His accent was nearly non-existent and his use of a contraction implied comfort with English. His team was fluent in many languages, Bond remembered, and spending years in Canada would have softened his harsh German accent.

"Yes," Bond said with a nod.

He pulled a metal chair from the card table and slid it over beside Zimmer. He sat down in the chair and looked into the fat man's watery eyes. The eyes of a hardened killer, Bond reminded himself. Was this what it looked like to stare into his eyes.

"Who want to kill you Mister Zimmer?"

"Wili," he said without hesitation. "That is, Wilhelm Farber."

"Why?"

"Because of greed." There was a pause as Zimmer took a deep breath and sighed. "And a stupid mistake we all made in America."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

**The Pact**

**Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn**  
**May, 1976**

The five men sat crowded in the booth of the all-night diner, their shoulders hunched as they huddled together in the small space. The three ashtrays on the table were piled with still smoldering cigarette butts, half-eaten plates of hamburgers and pork chops scattered around the table.

They had committed the murder twelve hours earlier. They had been weighing the options of their next action. The clock was racing against them. It was now two in the morning and the first of the five flights that would take the members piecemeal back to Germany was due to leave at ten.

"We're agreed," Major Ackerman said with a sharp nod. His German accent was noticeable, but nothing out of the ordinary for this part of Brooklyn. "We take this with us to our graves. We do not tell our wives or children. Even when only one is left, we do not tell the story."

"What of the colonel," asked Gunter. His English was flawless, no hint or trace of German in his speech. His green eyes darted around the table, asking the same question to his comrades as well as the Major.

"We killed the traitor," said Ackerman. "Mission accomplished. That is all he needs to know."

"Agreed," said Baer in accent-less English. Like Lang, he could pass for American with his language skills.

"Hands in," said Ackerman, placing a wrinkled hand in the middle of the table.

The rest of the men followed, placing their hands on top of their leader's. His steely gaze looked at each of them as they sealed their agreement. The message in his eyes was a clear one. If you break this pact, the Americans and the Stasi will be the least of your worries.

"That's settled," he said as they all pulled their hands away. "Now time for the next leg of this plan..."

**Spandau, Germany**  
**July, 2013**

James Bond sat in the chair across from the nervous, elderly man who was his protective charge. Friedrich Zimmer had been a brutal killer for the East German Stasi before defecting to England. Now, he had become the hunted. There was someone out there, a former member of Zimmer's hit team the authorities believed, that was stalking and killing off the rest of the team one by one. Only Zimmer and the murderer were still alive.

There was movement from the kitchen. Inspector Koch came into the sitting room with a cup of coffee in her hands. She handed it to Zimmer before taking a seat at the opposite end of the sofa. Bond thought that coffee was the last thing the man needed. He had smoked two cigarettes since Bond had arrived, and was in the process of polishing off a third. His knee bounced nervously up and down as he held tight to the cup of coffee and sipped it.

"Tell me about Wilhelm Farber," said Bond.

"Wili," Zimmer said wistfully. "He was the youngest of us. He was in Army intelligence before coming to the Stasi. The Major handpicked him from the list of candidates. The Major sent him to Moscow for special training with the KGB and then back to us. He was... he was like a machine when it came to killing. I never saw a man so ruthless and efficient, even in our line of work."

Zimmer paused, taking a puff off his cigarette and a long sip of coffee. Bond waited, allowing him to catch his breath. When he was satisfied that enough time had passed, Bond pressed on.

"What happened in America, Zimmer? I read you MI6 file before coming here. In your debriefing sections, you never mentioned taking part in a mission inside the United States."

Bond noticed Zimmer's hands were now shaking. The coffee in his cup swished and swirled in time with the vibrations of his hand as he tried to clam himself. Bond leaned back in the chair and watched.

"Is that why you came to the British instead of the Americans? Afraid they'd find out what you did on their own soil?"

No response, but Zimmer's already sweaty head was pouring with perspiration. His knee shook faster, rattling the coffee cup. He stayed silent, puffing away on his cigarette.

"You lied to MI6, Zimmer," Bond said coldly. "You remember the contract you signed all those years ago? Remember what the penalty is for lying? I have every damn right to get up now and leave you here for Farber, you goddamn liar."

"We killed an innocent man," Zimmer blurted out. His face contorted into a mask of pain. "Oh, God, he was innocent!"

Zimmer's body began to shake with dry sobs. Bond sat where he was, watching and analyzing Zimmer's actions. If he was faking, then they were pretty real crocodile tears. Bond was wary. This man had lied and killed for years. If whoever they killed in America was innocent, then Bond doubted he was the only innocent person the Stasi had killed.

While Zimmer sobbed, Koch got to her feet and took the coffee from his twitching hands. She said some soothing words to him in German before turning to leave. Bond caught her eye as she left. There was a single, subtle nod from her. You're almost there, the nod said.

"Zimmer," Bond said, sitting forward in his chair. The older man had calmed down from his frantic state moments earlier. He sniffled and rubbed his nose as his eyes met Bond's. Bond had used the stick, now it was time for the carrot. "I need details about what you did, and why Farber wants to kill you for it. Tell me that, and I promise you I'll get you to London safely."

"He-," Zimmer said before stopping. "The man we were to kill was an enemy of the GDR named Max Schultheiss. He was a high-ranking Stasi official that had worked with the black market, smuggling military hardware and weapons out of the Iron Curtain and into the west. He escaped before he could be arrested. He pleaded political asylum with the Americans in 1969. We caught up with him in May of '76 in Brooklyn."

"And he was innocent?"

"No, he wasn't... but the man we killed was. It was his roommate that we shot down in cold blood."

Zimmer whimpered why Bond took it all in. The wrong man taken out by this team of so-called expert killers. It seemed as if it was the lone misstep in a long history of quick and efficient murder. Bond looked up as Koch came back into the room and sat back on the sofa.

"What's the connection between this man's murder and Farber's rampage?" she asked casually, as if she hadn't left the room at all.

"He was the one who killed the man," Zimmer said softly. "We made him kill him. It was Wili's first kill as part of the unit. It was to make him officially one of us. After we found out we killed the wrong man, it began to tear at Wili. He was beginning to crack when I defected."

Koch looked at Bond.

"Join me in the other room for a moment."

Bond followed her towards the kitchen door. They stood in the doorway with a clear view on Zimmer as she talked softly to Bond.

"We don't have much in the way of Stasi records involving their unit," she said. "Those files would have been among the first ones destroyed when the GDR began to collapse. But I do know that what he says about Farber could have some weight to it. He was kicked out of the Stasi in '82 for improper conduct. That and the date he joined are the only two things on his files. Same with the others. They're all nothing but ghosts."

Bond leaned against the door frame and nodded slowly, taking in Koch's information. Killing was an act that not every man could take, and even hardened killers found their breaking point. Perhaps it was the murder in New York all those years ago that started the cracks forming? The fact that he was forced to kill gave him a target in his former teammates.

"What time is it?" he asked, staring out into space.

"Just after two."

"Four more hours," he said, rubbing his temple with his left hand. "We'll leave for the airport in three."

Koch nodded and went back into the sitting room with Bond to continue their late-night vigil. While they headed for their seats, the two police officers continued their patrol on the lawn outside the farmhouse. A set of Cobalt blue eyes looked out in the darkness and watched the guards as they trekked through the dew-covered grass. The eyes blinked slowly and continued to patiently wait for the window of opportunity to present itself.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

**Eye Movement**

Bond scowled at the information on his laptop screen. After Zimmer's story, he had relayed the defector's tale to Six. That began a rapid relay of information between MI6, CIA, and FBI on what happened that day in 1976. Nearly two and a half hours after the debriefing, an encrypted email from M's chief of staff Bill Tanner had arrived in his inbox. Marked "For Your Eyes Only" the file contained all the information the Americans had.

"What's wrong?" Koch asked from the door.

Bond looked up from the screen. She was standing in the entrance way to the kitchen with a clear line of sight on the still seated Zimmer thirty feet away. He continued to puff away on his cigarettes, occasionally looking around to make sure he was still safe. Bond sat at the kitchen table with his laptop propped up on the attaché case.

"Something interesting," he said neutrally. Koch was an ally and a police official, but Bond couldn't share the details of his email with her. "Not sure what to make of it."

"It's related to him," she said in a low voice, looking towards Zimmer. "Isn't it?"

"Spot-on deduction, detective," he said dryly.

"He's lying. I know that much."

"Whatever gave you that impression," said Bond without looking up from the computer screen. "If he was acting, it was high-class acting."

"His eye movement," she whispered. "I watched from the kitchen. He looked to the right as he told you his story. That's typical of fabricating a story. Nearly everyone looks to the left when they recall a memory or an event."

Bond turned away from the computer and looked up at her with a slight smirk on his lips.

"Well, well," he said playfully. "Didn't know you were such an astute reader of body language..."

"Kinesiology," she corrected. "That's my specialty."

"Regardless of what he's telling us, it doesn't matter. I have to get him out the country in three hours."

"Do you want to take another run at him?" Koch asked with raised eyebrows.

"No," was all Bond said.

What he didn't say was that he would let the interrogators and breakers MI6 kept on staff do that when they got to London. Time was short and he wouldn't risk letting Zimmer get spooked this close to leaving the safehouse. When they were back in England, they would have all the time in the world to decide what to do with the man who had blatantly lied to Bond and Koch.

He closed the laptop and slid it back into the case, locking the attaché case with the special combination lock Q branch had devised. Taking the case, he stood up from the table and walked back into the sitting room with Koch.

"On your feet," he said to Zimmer. "We're leaving now."

The man nodded and rose from the sofa. He grabbed his cigarette pack and tucked it into his jacket pocket while Koch walked out the front door. Bond stared at Zimmer as they waited for Koch to return. The heavyset man fidgeted and shuffled his feet, not daring to meet Bond's eye.

"After we get back to London, may I telephone my son?" he asked in a demure voice.

"We'll see."

"He lives in Canada. I met his mother, my ex-wife, soon after I defected."

"Fascinating," Bond said in a bored tone.

Zimmer narrowed his eyes at the man, his terrified mask dropping for just a moment. In that brief glimpse, Bond saw the hardened killer the years had made soft. If the circumstances were different, the eyes said, Bond would have paid for his flippancy.  
The front door came open. Koch rushed in, a Glock .40 in her hands. There was an edgy look on her face that said it all.

"My two men outside are down."

Bond pulled his Walther from his shoulder holster just as the footsteps came from behind. He wheeled around and saw the tall, gray-haired man staring impassively at them. In his left hand was a nine millimeter Sig Sauer. His blue eyes squared on Bond and looked him in the eye as he trained the gun on Zimmer.

"Drop the gun," said Wilhelm Farber. "We need to talk. All of us."


End file.
